Coinbase 'Increasing Transparency' for New Listings with Q2 Asset Roadmap

There could be as many as 50 new tokens listed on Coinbase between April and June, as America’s largest crypto exchange reveals a list of assets under consideration.

According to a blog post from Coinbase, the exchange is publishing the list “as part of an effort to increase transparency by providing as much information symmetry as possible.”

There are a total of 45 ERC-20 tokens on the list, including popular projects such as Binance USD (BUSD), the third-largest stablecoin with a market cap of more than $5 billion, and popular DAO project BitDAO (BIT).

Additionally, Coinbase referenced five SPL tokens issued on the Solana (SOL) network; last month, the crypto exchange added support for the Solana blockchain to its Coinbase Wallet browser extension.

The San Francisco-based exchange also stressed that “this is not an exhaustive list of all assets under consideration” and that it may list other assets not mentioned in the blog post.

Coinbase added that some of the mentioned assets may be listed with the recently introduced Experimental label, which is applied to lesser known new tokens or tokens with relatively low trading volumes.

The Coinbase effect

By publishing the list of assets under consideration, Coinbase is likely aiming to minimize the chances for so-called “pump and dump” scenarios.

In the past, token listings on Coinbase often brought bigger price pops than on other exchanges, a phenomenon broadly known as the “Coinbase Effect.”

“The ‘Coinbase Effect’ has become a well-known phenomenon having positive effects on asset prices when new listings are announced,” Roberto Talamas, analyst at crypto research firm Messari, wrote in a blog post last year.

According to Talamas, “the economic rationale behind the effect is straightforward. When a cryptocurrency is listed on a popular exchange it immediately gains exposure to a new set of market participants.”

For example, the ‘Coinbase Effect’ was on full display last September, when the exchange’s listing of Shiba Inu (SHIB) prompted the popular meme coin to rise 11% in just an hour, and 38% in the following day.

The Coinbase listing effect was short-lived, however; within weeks SHIB had retraced back to almost pre-listing prices.